Why are Main Streets Important?

When planning for a party, you have to find a location, pick a date, and have a list of people you want to invite. For main streets, the formula isn’t too different, you have a location, and you pick a date(avoiding other events or major travel holidays).

But when it comes to making your invite list, where do you start? Sharing the event on a social media page, maybe posting fliers in the downtown to let people know what is going on. But both of those limit your reach to who you already know or who already know you – so how do you grow that reach?

With the declining use and reach of newspaper media and an increased cost in social media marketing, you have to use your resources more strategically.

This is where targeted marketing comes into play. For targeted marketing, you often look at your target population or audience. For example, if you were looking to host a snack food event, posting fliers at a gym might not be the most effective avenue. The same idea applies to using social media to share your message.

Targeted messaging isn’t anything new to people in the world of marketing, however, it can be a daunting task.  Step in IMAGINE Berks.  We are prioritizing Main Streets as points of destinations, and we are using tools to support our Main Streets to make critical and effective marketing decisions.  We are looking at target populations, where people come from, and what their preferences are to build a better profile on who to target.

How can we help?

A great example of the type of assistance we are providing is in Boyertown (and if you haven’t been there lately, you really need to add it to your list!) The Main Street coordinator – Building a Better Boyertown, looked at where do the majority of event attendees come from.  Perhaps, not surprisingly, they drew in more people from outside of the county than from many of Berks’ main population centers. This is an important data point so that we understand that Boyertown is necessarily competing head-to-head with other Berks County Main Streets like West Reading.

Using visitor trend data can help make informed decisions, reduce advertising costs, and create a higher success rate in attracting people to an event and ultimately to day tripping at other times when there are no events.

We’re prioritizing our Main Streets and we think you should too.  If you haven’t been to one lately, check them out.  #BuyLocal, #SupportLocal, #IMAGINEBerks